Remapping Pipelines and Pathways: Listening to Queer and Transgender Youth of Color’s Trajectories Through Girls’ Juvenile Justice Facilities

Abstract

Queer and trans youth of color are disproportionately imprisoned in U.S. juvenile detention facilities where they are especially vulnerable to experiencing violence, isolation, neglect, and discrimination. While the figures of their overrepresentation are just emerging, regulation of youth sexuality and gender norms has been embedded in the logics of the juvenile court since its inception. Pathways and pipelines to incarceration have become popular metaphors in research and advocacy to explain how failed safety nets and multiple sites of punishment produce gendered and racialized patterns of criminalization; however, the overrepresentation of queer and trans youth of color has been virtually ignored within these conceptualizations. This article builds on a queer antiprison framework in examining the experiences of formerly incarcerated queer and trans youth of color in New York. Life history interviews were conducted as part of a larger community based participatory research (CBPR) project with 10 participants, ages 18–25. Findings expose the overlapping role of families of origin, foster and adoptive families, schools, and child welfare and juvenile justice systems, in a constellation of exposures to interpersonal and state violence. An alternative metaphor of a revolving door is proposed, and implications for social work are addressed.